Dynamic, Flowing Spaces Define a House Outside Columbus

Bart Prince has described his houses as butterflies alighting in the landscape—as much a part of nature as trees and rocks, but soaring free of conventional restraints and familiar forms. In his hands wood, glass and stone are no longer inanimate building materials but take on a life of their own. In the residence Prince designed for Steve Skilken, a Columbus, Ohio–based real estate developer, faceted glass domes that evoke a conservatory emerge from curved copper roofs and rough masonry walls, and a broad red umbrella shelters the motor court. If the house were not hidden from the highway, it would cause traffic pileups.

Skilken describes himself as an unpretentious farm boy, and, though he pilots his own helicopter between job sites, he opted to live in a modest, 1,000-square-foot cabin in the woods until he was ready to commission a house. For about nine years he clipped magazine articles, saving pictures of houses he liked, but he remained noncommittal. Then he saw a feature on the residence Prince designed for Joe and Etsuko Price in southern California (see Architectural Digest, December 1990) and immediately flew out to meet the architect and see the Price house. “I thought it was spectacular, and though Bart showed me some other work, I had already decided he was the right choice,” Skilken recalls.

Initially, the client requested a close copy of the Price house, but Prince had no interest in repeating himself. Besides, the program and the site were radically different from those of the earlier residence, which occupies an oceanfront lot and comprises a succession of inward-looking spaces containing light sensitive Japanese art.

Skilken instead wanted an open interior, an indoor lap pool flanked by exotic plantings and an aerie amid the treetops from which he could gaze up at the sky. He also asked that the roofs be treated as a fifth elevation that would look appealing as he flew in, and he requested a clearing in the forest that would allow a helicopter to hover before landing.

The architect paced the site and returned to his Albuquerque, New Mexico, base, telling his client: “If I put pencil to paper right away, it blocks all my creativity. So I sit around for three months and think about it, and all of a sudden the design comes to me.”

Three months later Prince told Skilken the plans were ready. “I looked at them, and even though it’s my business, I couldn’t decipher them,” Skilken admits. “Then he showed me renderings and, finally, a huge model. As I began to understand what it would look like, I realized I didn’t like it at all.” He sent a letter to Prince, who agreed to produce a new design.

Three months elapsed before Prince gave Skilken a roll of plans, and this time the response was enthusiastic. “Bart listens to you, changes things quite readily and doesn’t let his ego get in the way,” says the client. Local inspectors had never seen anything like the plans, but they issued approvals based on an independent engineer’s assessment that the structure would stand firm.

To prepare the site, Prince dammed a creek in a ravine, turning it into an ornamental pond, and located the house at the top of the slope, with a helipad at its base. To the east, another depression was excavated to provide limestone for building, and this, too, was flooded to serve as a recreational lake.

On the plan, the house appears as a cluster of circles, the largest of which has been cut in half, flanked by a circular entrance court and a curved ramp leading down to a drive-through garage and a shelter for the helicopter, which is drawn inside on rails from its round landing pad. All of these curves, and those of the laminated beams that support the vaults, are precisely calculated to achieve a harmonious symmetry. The hundreds of panes of glass, covering three-quarters of the exterior surface, presented a greater challenge. Each required a separate template and had to be precisely fitted to withstand the extremes of the Ohio climate. In contrast, the masons had to be urged repeatedly to make the walls rough and irregular. Despairing of their willingness to abandon their customary exactitude, Skilken suggested they drink beer before laying the stones.

From the granite-paved forecourt one enters the house at its middle level. Brazilian cherry bridges and stairways lead through open cages of laminated pine beams, linking semi-enclosed areas within the light-filled space. There is a view down through plate-glass balustrades to a seventy-five-foot-long serpentine pool lined with mirror-and glass mosaic, which was laid by a pair of craftsmen from Mexico. The pool is surrounded by sandstone pavers, lime and banana trees and lofty palms. Three wedge-shaped guest suites radiate from a spiral stairway ascending to the master suite. To the left of the entrance is a walkway to an open-sided living/dining area, with steps leading up to a round kitchen. Suspended above both is a belvedere/ bar that Skilken calls his storm room—a place to enjoy rainy weather or a full moon through the glass ceiling vault. The upstairs rooms open onto roof terraces, which gave Skilken a romantic setting for proposing to his wife, Karen.

Though they are now expecting a child and will have to baby-proof these vertiginous spaces, Skilken continues to describe the house as a place for big kids. Secret passageways are hidden within the masonry walls, and the kitchen’s refrigerator and microwave are mounted on an elevator that carries them down to the pool or up to the storm room.

To keep the plants healthy, the glass is unscreened and natural light floods in, bringing the labyrinthine interior into relief and adding a warm glow to wood and stone. When night falls, a constellation of tiny lights sparkles off the glass and heightens the sense of mystery. And yet, for all its complexities, the house is surprisingly compact, and its living areas seem intimate, thanks to the arced beams that embrace them. It also reaches out to the landscape, pulling in vistas of nature to complement the sophisticated artifice within.